Australian-based Integrated Research (IR), a unified communications (UC) management provider, announced that it has acquired U.S.-based contact center testing and monitoring firm, IQ Services, for $1.5 million.
IR said that the acquisition provides it with a number of strategically significant growth opportunities, both in its existing markets and into new allied markets:
- Provides the only fully integrated proactive systems management and testing product suite for unified communications, including the management of Avaya, Cisco and Microsoft’s Lync and Skype for business environments.
- IR’s range of solutions will be extended to include proactive performance testing of next-generation services such as Web real-time communication (WebRTC), software defined networks (SDN), session initiation protocols (SIP), Lync and Skype for Business.
- Acquires IQ Services’ cloud-based SaaS testing capabilities to provide a new growth area for the company.
- Provides geographic expansion opportunities for the acquired products into Europe and Asia as IQ Services currently only operates in North America.
- Expands IR’s Prognosis product line to provide an in-depth and seamless approach to gauge the customer experience and isolate the root cause of customer service problems within UC environments and contact centers.
“Organizations must ensure that their contact centers offer the highest possible quality of customer interaction if they are to remain competitive,” said Darc Rasmussen, CEO, IR, in a statement. “The complementary nature of Prognosis’ performance management and IQ Services’ testing will provide unprecedented levels of insight into unified communications & collaboration and contact center ecosystems.”
The combination of IR and IQ Services will create a complete view of cloud, hybrid and traditional on premises operations for unified communications and collaboration and contact center solutions. IQ Services provides the means to generate voice, data and video traffic to ensure WebRTC interactions work as intended.
“This acquisition is truly exciting as it strategically positions Integrated Research to progressively expand into new technological markets by providing a unique and fully integrated proactive management architecture as well as leveraging our existing customers and markets with substantial new offerings” said Steve Killelea, chairman, IR, in a statement.